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Man Bets $5 and Wins $1 Million at the Poker Table

Trending News: An Extremely Lucky Guy Won $1M on a $5 Poker Bet

PrintJoel Balsam

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When most of us head to the casino, we can expect to make a little bit of money, or more realistically, lose a little -- that’s the name of the game. But the reason people go again and again isn’t to walk out with $20, it’s the chance at winning the jackpot. A New Jersey man did just that.

At Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa on Saturday, December 23, a man named Harold McDowell of Lakewood, New Jersey, bet $5 on the three-card poker “six card bonus” and waited to see what would happen. Incredibly, the 85-year-old hit a six-card royal straight flush of all diamonds and walked away with $1,000,000.

Borgata posted about the feat on Instagram and quoted experts who said the odds of hitting the six-card bonus royal flush are 1 in 20,348,320.

He said that he had been playing with his back to his wife, who the day before learned she was cancer-free after battling liver and colon cancer, when he hit the jackpot. “I turned around and said, ‘I just won a million dollars,’” he told the Post. “She told me, ‘You’re full of crap.’”

McDowell said that the majority of his big win will go to the couple’s kids. He told the paper: “Our lives will probably stay pretty much the same. … Maybe we’ll take a cruise.”

Poker Jackpot

Not to take anything away from this winner because scoring that much cash with just $5 is next to impossible, but there have been bigger poker wins before. At the World Series of Poker in 2012, there were 48 entries and a ridiculous $42.6 million prize pool. Antonio Esfandiari won the big prize, taking home $18,346,673. In July, poker star Justin Bonomo shocked the poker world by winning $10 million on a $1 million buy-in. Still, the fact that McDowell was no poker series pro makes his win all the more crazy.

Want to win some big bucks at poker? Unfortunately, there are really no guarantees that you’ll win anything at all -- it is gambling, after all. But it definitely helps if you know some of the strategies. For a helpful starter’s guide, check out AskMen’s guide to playing (and winning) at poker.